


Annunciation

by Irrealia



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Elizabeth (1998)
Genre: Angst, Biblical References, Elizabethan, F/M, Poetry, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrealia/pseuds/Irrealia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An excessively romantic and serious interpretation of how and why the Tenth Doctor and Elizabeth I got it on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Annunciation

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : Only the poetry is mine, and I'll take the full blame for that.
> 
>  **Spoilers** : Set between The Waters of Mars and the End of Time, and spoilers for everything prior to New New Who. (YEAH THAT'S RIGHT EVERYTHING.) Set roughly nearish the end of Elizabeth, but you don't need to particularly have seen the movie for the fic to make sense.
> 
>  **Warnings** : Tiny amounts of blasphemy.
> 
> This fic owes its existence primarily to the following sources of inspiration and information:
> 
>   
> 
>   * Wikipedia, for historical background info. (Yes people, I used Wikipedia as a source. This is fanfic, what can you ask from me?)
>   
> 
>   * The 1998 movie Elizabeth, for giving me both emotional motivations for Elizabeth, and lush and wonderful imagery in my head to work with, in spite of its historical inaccuracies.
>   
> 
>   * The BBC, for its radio plays of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant, which infected me with an Elizabethan bug.
>   
> 
>   * My high school and university English teachers, for cursing me with an affection for all things iambic pentametre that has now lasted me half a lifetime.
>   
>  

> 
> As always, concrit is love. I meant to spend a lot more time fiddling with it and maybe even have like, someone beta it properly or something but then it just sort of seemed done. So here it is!

_England, 1563_

Elizabeth sits at her escritoire, long red hair loose down her back, makeup removed. She wears only a plain white shift and a velvet dressing gown; a fire burns hot in her room. She is thirty years old; the presently uncontested Queen of England, Ireland, and France; and unmarried. A stack of papers piled high with the business of her budding empire sits to her right, much of which is tedious political dreck on the subject of her (non-existent) virginity and its connubial surrender.

Her imagination of the regal state never included this much paperwork, and none of it this dull, if she is honest. She sifts through the paper idly, willing herself to pay attention, a task that is surprisingly difficult until she finds the letter at the bottom of the pile.

The penmanship is black and scrawly, utterly unlike the masterful hand of a scribe or the artlessly elegant letters of an educated courtier. She would almost think the writer barely literate, or at least, little used to the task of writing. The ink is strange, oily, and perfect, without a single blot or grain of sand stuck to it. The paper is thin and extraordinarily white.

 _Ad virginae_ , reads the inscription, deciphered. It is sealed with wax, like any letter, but the imprint is an intricate design of concentric circles that looks more like a diagramme of the heavenly spheres than any device she might recognise. Sliding a slender knife under the hard wax, so as not to break the strange design, she opens the unearthly correspondence to find the following:

 _The blessed virgin's countenance doth shew_  
A smile unseen by all who her surround,  
Yet noticed by one lonely angel who  
Doth wander ever, never heaven-bound.  
What smile is this, that speaketh grief, not bliss?  
What grief could such a maid exalted know?  
How might each maid around her daily miss  
How every cheerful laugh but hides her woe?  
If earthly maid and angel ever were  
Two kindred souls, then they are you and I.  
Oh lonely virgin, if you would prefer,  
Remain a virgin till the day you die.  
But if you would have joy, then look above:  
There is an angel there who knows of love.

Elizabeth believes in God and miracles, else she could never call herself a Christian in good faith. Angels have always seemed a bit gaudy and excessive, but here in her hand she holds a letter that never came from any world she knows, and if the author says he is an angel, she is in no position to counter his claim.

She slips the letter into the breast of her gown, taking it to bed, and rereads it over and over in the low firelight before finally letting sleep take her.

**

Every night after that, for five more days, she finds another letter in the same iconoclastic hand, each filled with a poem. Some laud her beauty, some her wisdom and learning. Some speak of love, some of sorrow. She is a queen, so this is hardly the first time she has been the recipient or subject of verse. In fact, these are far from the finest works she has received—but who ever said angels were masters of human speech? It must seem a blunt instrument to them, she considers, they who are accustomed to the songs of Paradise and the words of the Almighty. What the poems lack in aesthetic perfection, however, they make up for by being the most personal, the most direct. They speak to her not as a queen, but as any other woman.

Elizabeth is not unromantic—even if she has always had higher priorities than love—and she is not unmoved. The throne is a lonely seat.

**

On the seventh day, she finds a brief note that only says:  
__  
If you would have your angel, madam, rise:  
But turn and find him there before your eyes.

And so she stands, slowly, pulling away from the desk, the leaf of pure white paper shaking in her hand, turning slowly on the spot. She finds herself face to face with a tall man, thin as a willow, dressed in a most unanticipated fashion. He wears something like a doublet and hose, but loose, shapeless, and undecorated, in the most sombre of wools, though the stuff be fine. He has dark hair clipped short, but arrayed as though it were blown constantly by wind, and yet the air in her room is quite still. He does not seem a vision of heaven, nor look immortal, radiant, or perfect. She paces round him, slowly, capturing every absurd detail, and halting as she comes back around and catches sight of his eyes.

They are not the eyes of any mortal human. They are Biblically old, and ache with pain, two bleeding hearts reflected, for anyone who cares enough to see. Maybe he is an angel after all.

She is more afraid than she remembers being in some time, and reacts with some bravado.

“Confess thyself, thou villain, who art thou?”

“Your lonely angel madam, as you see.”

“As do thy rhymes aver, but tell me how thou camest here; queens have no privacy.”

“But for tonight you do,” he says, stepping closer to her. “Be not afraid.”

“How can I not? For though I am unseen, for now alone, I am forever queen.”

“And so you are, but yet you are a human—and virgin though they call you, not a maid.” He steps towards her again, too close, and cups her face in his cool hands with a tenderness that is so raw and awkward as to be disarming.

“Thou knowest I am first naught but a woman,” says Elizabeth, voice cracking slightly. She is hardly inexperienced, but it has been so dreadfully long since she has known a moment where she belonged only to herself, was a body impolitic. There is no particular reason she should want this man who has intruded on her safety, whom she does not know, and who has utterly failed to explain himself, except that he has given her this gift. “I only want what every woman does.”

“I am no man, and yet I find I want, as you do, to be other than myself.” Anguish and confusion overwhelm his face, suddenly, as if spilling out of his eyes, and she cannot help but be sympathetic.

“Then never wert thou angel,” she replies, reaching up and smoothing his hair, “For God's host know nothing of such sorrow as thou showst.”

And with that, their understanding established, he pulls her face up to his and kisses her with chapped and bitten lips, mouths opening, tongues turning greedy, each devouring the other in this impossible moment outside of history. He slides her robe off her shoulders, the plush velvet crashing soundlessly to the stone floors; she reaches for the buttons fastening his garments and undoes them with the deftness of a Renaissance lady accustomed to clothing far more complex than his. Soon her shift joins her robe and his clothes have been dealt with and she pulls him into the curtained universe of her bed.

**

Elizabeth wakes alone, naked, insistent sun penetrating a little even through the heavy velvet drapes that gird the royal bed. She would know it was not a dream, because her body is languid, exhausted, sore in unaccustomed places, damp in others. But there is also a snow-white envelope on her pillow, and inside it is a seal ring made of some light but strong metal, with a design of concentric circles etched into it.

She slides it on to the fourth finger of her left hand, letting its weight settle there, surprisingly comfortable. She belongs to no man.


End file.
